Confection bars such as those made of ice cream, fudge, pudding, flavored ices and the like are commonly formed with stick handles in an intermittent type molding machine. The stick confections are discharged in groups from the molding machine into the inlet of a multi-lane wrapping machine such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,045,405. The stick confections are wrapped as they are advanced through the multi-lane wrapping machine and the wrapped stick confections are discharged in groups with the stick ends oriented in the same direction. In order to reduce the overall size of the carton or box required for packaging the stick confections, it is desirable to arrange the stick confections with their stick ends overlapping. Stick confection stacking apparatus have heretofore been made in which one group of stick confections from the multi-lane wrapping machine are fed onto a first bar conveyor with the stick ends facing in one direction, and a succeeding group of articles from the multi-lane wrapping machine are inverted and fed onto a second bar conveyor paralleling the first bar conveyor in such a manner that the stick ends of the second group overlap the stick ends of the first group to form overlapping pairs. The two bar conveyors advance the stick confections in pairs to a stacker which feeds the overlapping pairs of stick confections onto an accumulator ramp to form a stack of paired stick confections. Groups of paired stick confections are then manually removed and counted by an operator and deposited in a box.
If one or more stick confections in a group of stick confections discharged from the wrapping machine is either underweight or missing, as may occur due to any of various malfunctions in the continuous molding machine and/or multi-lane wrapping machine, then the stack of stick confections formed by the prior bar stacker would either include some underweight stick confections or incomplete pairs of stick confections. The prior stick confection stacking apparatus required an operator or operators to count and remove groups of stick confections from the stack and place them in a box. However, it was difficult for the operator to detect and remove underweight stick confections and to insert and properly interleave another stick confection where one has been removed or was missing. Accordingly, the packages sometimes contained underweight stick confections, empty wrappers, or an insufficient number of stick confections, or stick confections in which some of the handles were not properly interleaved in pairs.